For me the dining room was a part of my childhood and it gives me an atavistic sense of satisfaction to have one, not to mention a place to put my inherited oak table around which many happy times were spent in my parents' home. However, we have three other rooms plus the living room in addition to the bedrooms, so it's not an issue. For someone with less space it might make sense to give it another function, and I'm actually curious to learn how the space might been used.

We have a small area no IN the kitchen by so close it barely constitutes its own room. It is appropriate for the style home we have. With the price of furniture to have many eating options is beyond our ability to furnish anyway. I was quite surprised to experience a friend's new build. Large two story "formal" dinning room area turned into pool hall. And so as not to confuse it had a family room off the kitchen, and eating area similar to ours near the kitchen and a beautifully large muli- purpose room downstairs. The pool room certainly could have been elsewhere. My sister used hers as a play room for many years. It kept the toddlers near by when she was cooking and it was easily gated to keep little ones away from the dangers of a stove etc. while cooking was going on. After a major remodel it is her only eating area. I think that is the difference for me. A formal room that is used only a few times a year seems sad and a silly waste of space. A proper dining room that is used daily GLORIOUS.

i had a table in my kitchen that i used all the time, so i turned my dining room into a bird room -- i had seven parrots at the time. The floor wasn't carpeted, and it worked really well.

A formal dining room that is used for dining only a few times a year can still be a well-used, functional room. We enjoy a room with a big table that doesn't have to be cleared off for meals. It's a great place for games, projects, gift-wrapping, homework, etc. Our house doesn't have extra space and we have a pretty casual lifestyle so a dining room that wasn't used regularly wouldn't make much sense for us. Our entertaining is usually outdoors but when we have dinner guests (usually holidays), we do use the big table.

Our dining room is a dining room and we use it every day. I have no desire to eat in a kitchen - I like to get away from the kitchen after I have finished cooking. Our dining room is not very formal, but it is a well-defined space, even though it is part of our art studio and has a couple of large cutouts to the living room. The dining room/art studio are an addition to our house (added in 1995) and are on a lower level than the rest of the house but have a vaulted ceiling with a sky light and sliding patio doors to the back yard.

As you can see, my brother's desk is also in the art studio area, but I'm okay with that. The buffet in the back holds linens, liquor and shot glasses (which we almost never use). This is an old photo, and I have a different centerpiece on the table now.

Here's a view of the dining room/art studio from the living room.

There is a temporary oak table in this photo, which we set up for a party, but normally that table is in storage in the garage, as it disassembles easily.

My sister in law repurposed one of many dining room tables I've been through for a coffee table. It was a queen-anne style oval table...she had the legs cut down and now it resides in their large square living room. Perfect for family game night.

When we bought our current house, there was a separate dining room and room for a small table in our smallish kitchen. We used it like that for about 3 years. Our kitchen was newly updated when we purchased so didn't need renovation. I got tired of cramped nightly eating in our small kitchen. We took down the wall between the dining room and kitchen. Purchased matching cabinets and made an island where the wall was. Now we eat every meal in our large eat-in kitchen and don't miss the formal dining room at all.

The dining room in our house was extremely small. It would barely have held a table for 8. Too cramped for a real dining room table. So we've always used it as a TV room. We don't like a TV in the living room, so this worked perfectly for us. We had a space off our kitchen for a table for 6 where we could cram more people around if needed during parties, so that's where we would eat. When we remodeled we kept the same overall use of space, but made the room off the kitchen a bit larger to hold our current kitchen table (which opens to seat 10) and kept the TV room a TV room.

We eat dinner in our dining room as a family every day, even if it's just take out. It's a separate room but just off of the kitchen. I would like to have the same arrangement when we remodel our new house.

We also have an eating area in the kitchen at the peninsula so I replaced the kitchen table and chairs with a sectional sofa and buffet, for lounging and storage.

tnfarmhouse - we have similar functional areas and I would love to see a picture of your sectional area if you're willing!

When we found our lot and decided to build in a few years, I had JUST bought antique DR furniture. If that had not been the case, I would have turned the DR into a library/reading room.

My bad...I just reread the thread title...dining ROOM, not dining table LOL

I found the repurposed dining table into coffee table interesting so no worries.

I have a dining room here and did in the last home that we built. What I've not had in both homes is a breakfast room. To me, it's the breakfast room that is redundant, not a dining room.

In the home we built, we took the space that would have been a breakfast room and made one large 16x10 kitchen.

In this house, I have a kitchen lounge with a small settee, storage ottoman and tv.

Even by myself, I sit at my dining table to eat. My dining room is casual and low-key.

I have a place for three to sit at the kitchen peninsula, but I rarely sit there unless I'm writing on the computer while drinking coffee. Guests sit there when I cook.

My DR is still a DR, but GF found she needed a much larger DR for holiday gatherings, so she swapped her DR and her LR. The dining room is huge and works well for big groups. The smaller formerly DR is now her "parlor" which is used for quiet reading or cozy conversations. She's also found that now her dd and dh use the dining room for doing computer work and studying and such as well, so both rooms are actually getting more use than they did before.

When I was a little girl, our dining room was our "family room" where we played and watched TV. When my brother took up piano, the folks finally bit the bullet and remodeled to turn the garage into the family room and add on a large, two car garage. So we had somewhere to go to get away from all the piano practicing! So the dining room also became the piano room. At my last house, we had a tiny kitchen so we ate in the dining room a lot. Also had a small office in there and I used the dining table a lot as a work table. Now I am back at my mom's house and she had a formal dining room and I am loving having one again. I do a lot of entertaining, and I love big Sunday dinners with family in a dining room. I have great memories of eating in Bubbie's dining room on Sundays, even though she also had an eat-in kitchen. I too like getting away from the kitchen to eat. My current dining room opens out onto the porch so I'm looking forward to some nice porch parties and using the dining room for a buffet.

We have a dining room where most meals are eaten. It is separated from the kitchen by a pass through. The pass through makes it possible for the room to get sunlight from 3 sides. When I am trying to enjoy a meal, I have no desire to see the swath of destruction that it took to get the meal on the table. I do wish that we had been able to have a breakfast room, or rather, a spot with just a table and 2 chairs for those quick meals when it is just 2 or fewer people eating at the same time.

We turned a room into a dining room. We have an eat-in kitchen but the table in there is only used by DH for breakfast now. I really like having a dining room - even though it also has to function as office since we don't have a large house. It is definitely not "formal". A lot of non-dining activities happen at the table.

I have a table to eat around, and I didn't see the need to trip over it while cooking, so I have a dining area separate from the kitchen in my current build. So, I'm building one in, and not intending to re-purpose anything. I won't be eating in my kitchen.

The house I had renovated and now live in had a galley kitchen with space for a table on one end, with no formal dining space. I had the wall on the other side of the table completely knocked out sacrificing the third bedroom, leaving one long room, but the table is so far now from the kitchen work space It really does not at all feel like one is eating in the same room. I consider it my dining room; there no longer is an 'eat in kitchen' in this home.

When we remodeled the home we moved into last year we removed a few walls to create an open living space. The former dining room, which is open now between the living room and the kitchen, became the TV room; what was the "eat in" space in the kitchen now houses the piano. There is counter space in the kitchen for breakfast and the small den open to the kitchen became the dining space. It seats 8 easily and can be configured to seat several more when needed. In the warm weather, 6+ months of the year here, we mostly eat on the deck. We do not miss having a formal dining room at all.

If the dining room is dead, we must be ghosts :-)

We have a separate dining room and even when we did our whole house reno we kept the DR and in fact made it bigger. Perhaps I'm old school but I love having a separate DR. Our kitchen does have an eat-in area with a small sitting area and we could have added in the DR and made it open-concept but we simply weren't interested in having a large cavernous space such as that.

Our never-used dining room has been turned into my quilting room. My 10 foot quilting frame and machine are in it, along with a couple of small tables that hold my quilting supplies. At least it gets used now!

Donna

We have a nice size formal dining room and when the kids were home I made sure we used it regularly. There's just a slightly different vibe to that room.

We put a 1000 square foot 2 story addition on our home about 20 years ago and made the dining room a little larger. Our kitchen was the focus of the remodeling and it is now very large. We have a table that seats 8 in the bay window and there are 4 chairs at the island and room for 2 more.

Now we only use the dining room for special occasions - for holidays or when the kids are home. When it's just the 2 of us we eat in the kitchen.

We just got the dining room "back" after years of using it as a playroom. Part of the decision to turn it into a playroom was -- right next to LR, and it was carpeted, and created a place to corral toys. We actually used the family room (which was not carpeted, and a little larger) as the dining room, it was a little more casual adjacent to kitchen, and much easier to clean up with little kids.